Negotiating shared responsibility for sustainable urban development: pronouns and in-here-ness as rhetorical resources

Purpose This article explores how issues of shared responsibility are discursively negotiated within the realm of managing collaborative efforts between organizational actors for sustainable urban development abiding to the agenda 2030. Design/methodology/approach The research explored shared responsibility as localized, micro-discursive negotiations within and between local organizations in Sweden. Findings Analysis displays how speakers’ use of rhetorical resources vacillates along two continuums: the who responsible for sustainability and the discursive construction of agency. This shows that the position where the actors share responsibility, that is when the actors are constructed as both able and willing to take responsibility and as sharing a collective identity, is continuously being negotiated in communication. Originality/value The article contributes to literature on collaborative ways of organizing and managing complex public challenges. With a focus on the discursive construction of shared responsibility, the concept of in-here-ness is introduced to denote accepted and assumed responsibility, which may shift through the use of pronouns: from a narrow “I” or “we” of stakeholders to a wider “we” of collaborating parties. The article further contributes to the empirical field of sustainable development at the municipal level.